(CNS): There is now an “insatiable appetite” for guns among those immersed in local gang culture, Deputy Police Commissioner Kurt Walton said after officers recovered two more handguns that were being smuggled onto the island at the weekend. Less than 48 hours after a judge locked up four different men for long periods of time for possessing illegal firearms, others were attempting to bring in more.

Two semi-automatic handguns, a 9mm and a .45 calibre, as well as six rounds of ammunition were recovered by police in the early hours of Sunday morning. They also seized a small boat and arrested two men in South Sound, along the shoreline, in connection with the smuggling effort. The two men, both from Bodden Town aged 20 and 27, were arrested at around 1am on suspicion of possession of unlicensed firearms and are now in police custody.

The growth in gun crime even in the face of heavy penalties is now a very serious concern for the community.

“Despite the convictions and heavy sentences handed down against four individuals just last Friday, with a total of 37 years in custodial time levied by the court, young men continue to be involved in bringing firearms to our islands,” said Walton. “There is an insatiable appetite for firearms in Cayman among certain individuals immersed in a gang culture, and we are constantly faced with the threat this poses for public safety. As the court said …we need anyone with information about the movement of firearms to come forward and tell us what they know, even anonymously.”

In addition, to the four gun cases dealt with on Friday, another gang-related firearms trial is set to start in Grand Court on Tuesday.

Comments (42)

Dep.Comm. Kurt Walton and his officers certainly have their work cut out to try and eradicate this influx of firearms that is entering our shores. This is a huge challenge for RCIPS and certainly not an easy task. These gangs don’t need videos to encourage the violence they are carrying out. It seems to have been instilled in them from an early age. Mr Walton is correct in saying these people have an “insatiable appetite” for these weapons. Gangs at war with gangs and no winner at the end of it all. However, RCIPS is proving that they are making a great effort in apprehending and convicting these criminals and confiscating their weapons. These firearms are without doubt entering our shores via boats and not through the airport. It is not so easy as one might think to constantly monitor this access route. There is always someone that will fly below the radar, but with the public’s cooperation, hopefully, we can rid this island of the scourge. We don’t want a “little Chicago” in Cayman.
I really feel, and I’m sure I speak for the majority of residents, that this has to be addressed at an early stage in the lives of these young men. It has to be started at home with good parenting skills and carried all through their school years. There are many single parents i.e. Babies having babies! This is not going to change the world over but education is key and if difficulties occur along the way, help should be at hand within Social Services/Child Protection to guide these young mums in the right direction. Prevention is better than cure and I would urge the Government to pour money into this necessary service in order to avoid what we are currently experiencing with this “gang culture.” These children are our future, let’s do our best to educate them to learn right from wrong and not be cohersed into this web of gangs.

No scientific poll required: That ‘insatiable appetite for guns’ comes from the very simple fact that these same adolescents and young men have just spent the last decade of their young lives playing first-person shoot’em up video games. If you think for a minute that this warfare approach to ‘fun’ hasn’t twisted their minds and desensitized them to this gun culture… you’d be sadly mistaken. We (the world) are reaping what we sowed in their young minds.

Such violent video games enhances an ego of self-empowerment in them that is associated with having a gun or weapon, and being able to do as they like with the weapon. They are brainlock in the game that rewards them for using the weapons well. Don’t water down the seriousness by which these games have an effect on youngsters – they do!

Guns have not been a new thing in the Cayman Islands, but not every gang, would be able to acquire one with ease. While Jamaica is close border to us, firearms in Jamaica have been proven expensive and many gangs don’t normally sell there firearms, for the simple reason for there own protection.

With that said, Jamaica plays a significant role in distribution of illegal firearms throughout the Caribbean. One the Main contribution to this,is the disbanded army in Haiti. Since the army quasi-disbandment in 1995, Many of the firearms were never recalled, and even though the army is disbanded there is strong unofficial military presence still in place. This as to strive, so sale of guns on the black market help finance there cause, with Jamaica being one there main market, and now flowing through the Caribbean, and more naturally the cayman islands. This has however not new thing, this as been happening for years, however this the earthquake and the hurricane the trade have intensified, which we are no doubt seeing the effect in the Cayman islands.

However, there is another major problem with the crime or gang within the cayman islands and why the heavy prison term is not acting as deterrent is found within the prison itself.
1st the individuals within gang population have no known sign or markings to properly identify, secondly there is very little allegiance among ambitious members who wants to lead, which cause friction. The other point is the known accessable time given to incarcerated person right of the back. I believe most once in custody, you are allowed 6-8 members to visit you once you have place them on your visitation list, that I believe help fuel the crime within the cayman islands.

Please don’t get me wrong, I am aware of other forms indirect contact with the outside world, however if there was longer period of vetting time before an individual is allowed contact with certainly cut down the level of crime we are seeing. With the advance in technology, I would thing that the prison would be able to have some form of cell phone jamming signal in order to properly isolate those convicted.

The Government, in my view should seek to signed M.O.U’s ( Memorandums of Understanding) with various governments around the caribbean, as well the united states in help to protect the borders, along with investing in long range vessels to protect our seas.

There is no border control lol.
no scanning , no fingerprinting , no questioning. I go to Miami and I feel im being interrogated. its great.
maybe someone some day will do something . till then its an admin thing at airport only I guess to see who and when you last visited. lol.

Do you mean there is no maritime patrol?
They manage to find a single bullet in outbound visitors luggage at airport and start absolutely useless legal process instead if just warning them.
The crime is organized here that is why maritime patrol is non existent.

Our “fault-deflecting” recreational pot smokers enabled all of the bad that piggy-backs in with their transshipments. The cash is money grammed back to smurfs in Tivoli Gardens at a pace of $190mln/yr! Almost $40k/yr for every Jamaican national permit holder? Come on! We are supposed to be a financially savvy money center?! Clearly we don’t know the half of it!

The governor is responsible for law and order and we never hear a word from her on the subject. In fact we never hear a word from her on any subject. It’s tempting to ask if she regards her time here as a long, pleasant vacation.

If she was doing her job, we’d expect her (or at least her band of merry men and women up there in the administration building) to be analyzing the problem and issuing some kind of statement now and again to reassure us about what she’s doing about crime. Because we are worried, and to have the person responsible for this mess say nothing and do nothing about it is a disgrace.

What happened to the National Security Council established by the constitution? I understand she hasn’t bothered to convene it in years. Why?

Say something, governor! If only that you’ll retire early and hand over to someone with the energy and a commitment to help your law-abiding citizenry. You’re clearly as tired of us as we are of you.

But if you keep trying to stich up every police chief that comes to this island who gets too close to the powers that oversee crime on these islands, it’s no wonder that it’s getting out of control.
Take a look at who actually guards your borders and most of your property, yep, Jamaicans. You didn’t want to pay for professional police officers from the UK, US, Canada or any other competent country, no, (probably for racial and petty perceptions of colonialism) you made life so unbearable that those who were here, up sticks and left. You then put up posters in Kingston requesting applicants from the Jamaican police services, who having been subjected to years of violence and threats came to Cayman for the quiet life.
What on earth did you think was going to happen?

If you’re not going to build a proper police training centre, manned by experienced training staff from overseas or send recruits to the UK for basic training, then you’ll just have to live with the mess you have.
And blaming the Governor just isn’t a rational response to your own societal breakdown and lack of parental guidance or education.

I guess if you are in a gang now, the prospect of 10 years in jail IF you are caught and convicted pales against the more likely probability of being caught defenceless by one of your competitors who is carrying a gun. The deterrent aspect is one part, but the real challenge is getting the guns off the street in the first place. Offer substantial rewards for anonymous information leading to the arrest of an individual with a weapon would help. Gives the gang banger an opportunity to take his armed opponent out of circulation without being branded a snitch. Of course, doesn’t help with the problem of status that these idiots think goes along with having a gun. Perhaps an ad campaign challenging the manhood of someone who has to carry a gun!

Our problem is much bigger than guns. It is a long-ignored social problem linked to high instances of adolescent pregnancy. The resultant kids face resentful formative years of being unwanted, with consequent low self-worth, easily lured into collectives that understand and respect anti-social lashing out. We have too many sympathetic to criminal lifestyles as a viable (albeit short-lived) career choice. Many of the fathers of these kids had the same sad story. Generations of these people control pockets of semi-autonomous territory throughout Grand Cayman, knowing the police keep out. Turning this around is going to take a decade or more of responsible multi-pronged social commitment with more visible police deterrent. We’ve paid for many long-ignored studies on this.

Lets not forget the head in the sand Minister of Education and LOGB at the time stating categorically “there are no gangs in the schools” back about 15 years ago. Just so they wouldn’t alienate any voters.

Complete lack of leadership has contributed to the problems we are seeing now which unfortunately are irreversible. Yet we keep electing the same incompetent politicians.

Those now crying foul and making statements about the amount of weapons now in the hands of our young people are the very persons involved and responsiblie for this terrible situation. It is their very direct link to and complicity in some circumstances with certain parties and failure to take action against certain princples and friends in certain gov’t departments and in our society who’s longstanding criminal and corrupt behavior enable these smmuggling routes to now become well established and highly evolved and very organized. Then adding the dynamic of hiring and putting foreign nationals from jurisdiction involved to police us. Wow! it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand exactly what is going on here in these islands here today. Who says crime doesnt pay???

I told them about gangs from my school days but you all just let it slip away and kept getting my ass kicked and punch cause you all you did was laugh at me it’s catching up with you police now the root as grown in to a tree and you can’t cut it down it’s too big for you

Folks, I hate to say this, but all these weapons coming in, looks like a battle for drug territory. As drug dealers on the island become more competitive than others, they become more aggresive and organized. Its just the way the beast works.

I think its high time that we impliment tougher sentences on gun users. And for crying out loud, when there is crystal clear evidence of a deliberate murder, we should bring back the DEATH PENALTY!

You have alot of thugs with no respect for Police officers, Judges and the Law. The days of the brown uniform are gone.

I also suggest we decriminalize the soft drug Marajuana. That would free up space in Northward Prison to apprehended hard drug criminals.

OMG the RCIPS finally realizes we have guns on the Island…wow this has been going on since the late 80’s early 90’s. Does anyone recall MacCandy killing the shop owner in the back of his head to name one. It just escalated and 30 years later now noticing it….just like “Cayman doesn’t have a gang problem”. This is a DUH moment, the just miraculously appeared on the Island!!! Imagine, this is what they are finding, what there really is that they haven’t found or seen yet!!!